


until you believe it (the evening star remix)

by imagines



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Series, Sheith Remix 2020, s8 what s8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines
Summary: Somehow, Keith always finds Shiro, no matter where Shiro is. Whether he’s holding a meeting in his office, plotting supply routes onboard the Atlas, or hitting the gym, Shiro himself seems to be a homing beacon for Keith, flashing out a signal that only Keith can sense. It was the same on the Castleship, or during skirmishes with the Galra. Perhaps Keith is just unusually good at guessing where Shiro is most likely to be; perhaps Keith is a little bit magic. Either way, Keith has this special power only for Shiro, and Shiro loves it.This evening’s no different. Shiro can’t muster even a pretense of surprise when he catches sight of Keith existing the service door that leads to the upper surface of the Atlas. Shiro had come out here to be alone...but being alone with Keith is even better. It’s been awhile, he realizes, since they justsattogether with nothing on either of their agendas.[in which Shiro & Keith have some things to talk about]
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89
Collections: Sheith Remix 2020





	until you believe it (the evening star remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glyphhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glyphhunter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [one more time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15923987) by [Glyphhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glyphhunter/pseuds/Glyphhunter). 



> HOLY SHIT GLYPHHUNTER I'M SORRY THIS IS SO FRICKING LATE. i just want to say i absolutely LOVE your original work; it made me cry every time i reread it (which i did a lot while writing this) & it is just so sweet & uplifting & i rly hope i stayed true to the big feels it gave me. <3 thank you so much for writing such a beautiful & heartwarming fic & allowing me the chance to remix it!!

Somehow, Keith always finds Shiro, no matter where Shiro is. Whether he’s holding a meeting in his office, plotting supply routes onboard the Atlas, or hitting the gym, Shiro himself seems to be a homing beacon for Keith, flashing out a signal that only Keith can sense. It was the same on the Castleship, or during skirmishes with the Galra. Perhaps Keith is just unusually good at guessing where Shiro is most likely to be; perhaps Keith is a little bit magic. Either way, Keith has this special power only for Shiro, and Shiro loves it.

This evening’s no different. Shiro can’t muster even a pretense of surprise when he catches sight of Keith existing the service door that leads to the upper surface of the Atlas. Shiro had come out here to be alone...but being alone with Keith is even better. It’s been awhile, he realizes, since they just _sat_ together with nothing on either of their agendas.

Keith is still paler than he should be and a little on the thin side as well—products of being cooped up in a bed in the med center for the last few weeks. And he’s breathing hard, as though the short walk from his hospital room was enough to wind him. But he sighs in relief as he arranges himself cross-legged beside Shiro, like he’s been waiting all day for this very moment. And maybe he has been, Shiro realizes with a jolt to his heart.

All that’s left of the sun is a glowing ember lending scarlet highlights to Keith’s hair, flickering in the strands like flames among coals as the evening breeze plays through the desert landscape. He’s wearing an old sweater, frayed at the cuffs and faded to a dull coral. Shiro doesn’t recognize it, but it looks soft. Though not warm enough, apparently, since Keith is shivering a little as the temperature falls with the sun. Shiro is nearly overcome by an urge to put his arms around Keith, to keep him close and warm, but the strange new twinge in his chest holds him back. In this moment, he suddenly isn’t sure how Keith would take such a gesture, though it should be familiar to them both. Nor is Shiro sure what he would mean by it, so—maybe it’s better if he doesn’t.

“Do the nurses know you’re out here?” Shiro asks.

Keith cuts his eyes over to Shiro. “I mean, they technically _know_.”

“Uh-huh. How many of them did you have to evade this time?” It isn’t the first unauthorized excursion Keith has taken in recent days.

“Only two!” Keith protests. “They’re not _as_ worried anymore. I’m supposed to get discharged soon. I’m practically back to normal, you know,” he huffs.

“And I’m very glad to hear it. Just...keep on healing up, okay, Keith?”

“I will. I promise.” Keith rests his chin on his knees and hugs his legs, staring out over the desert.

The sunset is spreading across the horizon like spilled watercolors; higher in the sky, it deepens to ink-black shot through with the familiar pinpricks of light that have kept Shiro company all his life. Even when imprisoned by the Galra, the memory of constellations kept him grounded. In his mind, he’d spin Earth’s sky overhead, sending the moon through its phases and watching Orion and Cassiopeia on their eternal march across the heavens.

Shiro feels his eyes beginning to sting. A piece of him, he believes, is gone forever—the innocent heart that saw the potential for exploration among the stars, replaced by the unshakeable knowledge that hell and horrors lie in wait out there as well. He left that part of himself buried in the bloody sands of the arena, and he can’t begin to guess how long the wound will ache.

Tonight, silently, he names the constellations just as he’s done since childhood. Thoughts of the Galra slip away, drowned out by the music of the spheres. Tears slide down his cheeks as his smile grows. This sight—he will never again be able to take it for granted.

A meteor streaks across the sky, and Shiro murmurs, “Make a wish.”

“Already did.”

“What’d you wish for?”

Keith frowns. “Isn’t it like birthday candles? Won’t come true if I say it.”

“I think meteors are different,” Shiro wheedles, but Keith won’t budge.

“I’m not taking chances,” he insists, and that’s the end of that.

They sit in silence until the moon slides into view, a perfect platinum crescent. “Amazing,” Shiro says, finally wiping away his tears.

“Yeah.” There’s a sweet laugh tucked away in in Keith’s tone; when Shiro looks at him, he’s hiding a smile in his sleeve and looking right at Shiro.

Shiro’s heart flutters again. “The sunset, not me,” he admonishes, as if admonishing Keith has _ever_ gotten Shiro anywhere. He’s kinda proud of how steady he keeps his voice, despite the heat rising in his cheeks thanks to Keith’s unwavering gaze.

“I saw it,” Keith assures him, though the twinkle in his eye tells Shiro there’s gotta be a catch to the statement. Keith was probably watching him more than the sunset, Shiro is certain of it.

And Keith still isn’t looking away.

Shiro has encountered but a few of these moments in his short life—moments like a knife edge, when a decision is made in the space of a heartbeat and nothing is ever the same again. Something is changing between them in this particular moment. No—not changing. It was already there, this feeling—this truth. Now, as their hearts beat, it is becoming visible. Like Venus in the west at twilight, it is a faint glow building to a brilliant wonder.

“You’re like starlight,” Keith whispers, and just as Shiro’s breath catches on his shock, Keith is touching him—a warm palm cupping Shiro’s jaw; a thumb brushing the jagged edge of his scar. “Beautiful,” Keith adds, which isn’t something anyone’s called Shiro in—a long time.

“ _I’m_ beautiful?” Shiro can’t hide his disbelief, and it takes all his willpower not to argue. He was beautiful once, he knows that much—the golden boy, everyone’s crush, able to steal hearts with a wink or a smile. But that was another life.

Keith’s soft tough turns to a firm grip, as if making sure Shiro holds still to hear his next words. “Always.”

Shiro’s heartbeat thumps against Keith’s fingertips when Keith’s hand comes to rest on Shiro’s neck. Has he ever looked at Keith’s eyes for this long before? At times he’s wanted to, but the moment always broke. This time, the thread of their gaze is only strengthening.

“I love you,” Keith says. It’s not a surprise to Shiro. Keith has said it before and has shown it for years. But there’s something new this time...a blank space after the words. A missing idea to complete the sentiment. So much can be said with silence.

Keith leans in toward Shiro, and drawn in by Keith’s magnetic field, Shiro lets himself lean in too, pressing his forehead against Keith’s.

There’s hardly any distance left between them. It’s the closest they’ve ever come to—something else that would be new.

Shiro can feel Keith’s warm breath against his lips when Keith whispers it again: “I love you.” It would be so easy to just—lean further, and—

Shiro knows he wants it. But does Keith?

In a moment of bravery, Shiro reaches out to touch Keith’s hip, narrow and too sharp through his thin cotton pants. An intimate caress, and Keith’s tiny gasp lets Shiro know he feels it. But Keith doesn’t move away, and Shiro doesn’t let go—not till Keith’s body starts to tremble, and it isn’t the cold this time. It’s exhaustion, and maybe pain as well.

“Let’s get you back,” he tells Keith.

“I’m fine,” Keith insists, although he clearly is far from it.

Shiro takes Keith’s slender wrist in his hand. “You’re about to pass out.” Keith grumbles playfully as Shiro helps him up, swaying slightly before Shiro finally wraps his arms around him. Like he’d wanted to before, but more necessary now.

He guides Keith back to the med center, murmuring warnings of loose rocks and cracked earth. They don’t question whatever just transpired between them.

Keith winces and screws his eyes shut as they step into the bright fluorescent light of the elevator. Shiro tugs him still closer, urging him with gentle hands to hide his face in Shiro’s shoulder. He can’t help kissing the top of Keith’s head. That shouldn’t be too much, he hopes, even if they definitely have a few things to talk about. But later, when Keith is well again.

Shiro can’t be sure why it’s so hard to say those words back to Keith. He feels it for sure; it’s not unfamiliar in the slightest. Perhaps he’s afraid of overwhelming Keith, or meaning the wrong thing, or maybe it’s just that it’s hard enough to love himself some days without dragging another person into the shambles of his mind. Not that Keith would see it that way, Shiro supposes.

Keith clings to him until Shiro is easing him back into his bed. His eyes are still closed, fatigue having set in. “I love you,” Keith says once more, pawing at the air in Shiro’s general direction. Shiro grabs his hand and squeezes gently. “Shiro. I love you.”

Shiro kisses the back of his hand. “I know.” He scoots his chair closer, so he can whisper it into Keith’s ear: “I know.”

Keith’s eyes drift open, fixed on Shiro’s face with an intensity belying his weariness. “Always,” he vows.

“I know,” Shiro assures him one more time. And he does know. What kind of love it is, what Keith may want from telling him—these are questions for another time. It doesn’t matter right now. “Sleep,” he tells Keith. “Your mother will be here in the morning.”

* * *

The path to recovery takes many days more than either Keith or Shiro would like—but especially Keith, who wreaks further havoc in the ward as he regains his strength. The nurses find him exploring the hospital’s basement one day; on the next, they discover him holding court in his room for a dozen or so pediatric patients, whom Keith is regaling with toned-down tales of battles and princesses and evil witches. Finally, he’s freed from his bed and pajamas, though he makes sure to promise the harried nurses that he’ll be back to visit.

Keith comes to Shiro’s quarters the same evening after he’s discharged. They’ve spent countless hours in each other’s rooms over the years since they met. This time shouldn’t be any different...yet it _is_ , in some way Shiro can’t define. Maybe it’s Keith curled up close to Shiro’s side on the sofa, rather than stretched out lounging with his feet in Shiro’s lap. They’ve been comfortable for a very long time in each other’s personal space, but what Keith is doing is very close to...cuddling. It’s so easy for Shiro to shift his arm down from the back of the sofa and pull Keith even closer. And the little sigh that escapes Keith’s lips when he does so—Shiro represses the shiver that threatens to alert Keith to his flustered state of mind.

They order pizza and watch a movie. Shiro can’t even follow the plot, too entranced is he by the low light playing off Keith’s silky hair; by the powerful muscles packed into Keith’s delicate frame. Keith is a line of fire from Shiro’s shoulder to his thigh, and Shiro is more than happy to burn.

There’s a car chase happening on screen. Shiro hasn’t the faintest idea what lead to the scene, nor will he find out how it ends, because Keith is tilting up his head to look at Shiro and there is nowhere else Shiro wants to focus.

“What are you thinking about?” Keith asks, catching Shiro in his distraction.

At one point in his life, Shiro might have covered for himself—made a joke; laughed it off. But the time for comfortable half-truths is long gone between the two of them. “You,” he says, and watches Keith’s eyes fly wide. Not the answer Keith was expecting, apparently. And is that a good thing or a bad thing, in Keith’s mind?

“Why?” Keith wants to know. He sounds guarded—is it suspicion, or a wish to protect himself from an answer he does not want?

What is it that Keith _wants_?

“Just thinking that I’m lucky to have you in my life,” Shiro says. His heart is thundering, and he wonders if Keith can hear it. There’s lightning in Keith’s eyes, or is it tears? _Push it further_ , the thunder urges. “...And that you’re beautiful.”

Keith seems to have stopped breathing.

“And that I love you,” Shiro finishes.

“Shiro...”

He watches Keith’s face as Keith wrestles with whatever it is he wants to say. Perhaps he’ll say it back; perhaps not. Either way, Shiro has told him the truth and will never regret it.

“Shiro, I wanna kiss you.” Keith’s mouth is set, determined and serious.

“Really?” Shiro doesn’t mean to sound so surprised, it’s just—

“Don’t you know how much I want you?” Keith asks. “In my life, and—and otherwise?”

Shiro shakes his head. His throat aches; it’s hard to accept these words from Keith, even though hearing them makes him so happy. “Tell me again.”

“You’re my best friend and you’re beautiful. I love you. I want _you_.”

“Wherever I am, you find me,” Shiro tells him, as they drift closer to each other. “I love that about you.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Keith whispers, and kisses the absolute living daylights out of Shiro.

Minutes later and far more rumpled and flushed than before, they are quiet together, holding on to each other as a whitewater flood of emotions breaks over them.

“I love you. I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it,” Keith declares. “I’ll tell you until you believe me.”

“What if I never quite believe you?” Shiro crooks the corner of his mouth in a smile—he’s joking. Well, mostly joking.

Keith narrows his eyes. He must know it’s only _mostly_ joking. “Then I’ll tell you every day anyway. You know me—I’ll never give up on you.”

“I know,” Shiro breathes, and then there’s nothing else he wants to say for awhile, because Keith desperately needs kissing again.


End file.
